Chief Security Research Articles

Transitional Justice: A Decade of Debate and Experience. (review)

Transitional Justice: A Decade of Debate and Experience Richard Lewis Siegel (bio) Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (New York: Random House, 1997). Alison Brysk, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democratization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). Neil J. Kritz, ed., Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes 3 Vols. (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995). Jaime Malamud-Goti, Game Without End: State Terror and the Politics of Justice (Norman, OK and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism (New York: Random House, 1995). Irwin P. Stotzky, ed., Transition to Democracy in Latin America: The Role of the Judiciary (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993). Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1991). [End Page 431] I. Introduction Former East German Security Chief Egon Krenz is prosecuted and sentenced in 1997 to six and a half years in prison for his involvement with Berlin Wall shootings. The people of Uruguay vote in a referendum to maintain an amnesty law designed to protect their armed forces from prosecution. Argentine junta leaders are convicted, sentenced, and pardoned for their roles in crimes during the “dirty war” of the 1970s and early 1980s. Archbishop Desmond Tutu opens a meeting of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the new government offers amnesty from civil and criminal prosecution to persons who offer full disclosure of politically motivated crimes committed between 1960 and 1993. Such is transitional justice as practiced on two of the four continents that have provided backdrops for its debates, dramas, human stories, and political repercussions. Similar and varying acts as well as entire dramas unfold from Central America to Ethiopia, from Cambodia to Poland. Although most countries emerging from late-twentieth century authoritarianism have scarcely used their criminal justice systems to address the crimes of the old regimes, there are significant exceptions. Some one hundred East German soldiers and officials have stood trial since unification for the deaths of individuals who had tried to leave East Germany. 1 Prosecutions have also occurred or are proceeding in countries including Latvia, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, South Africa, and South Korea even as most countries have chosen to concentrate on truth commission reports or have consciously chosen to ignore past crimes and violations of rights. Argentina followed Greece in prosecuting leaders of deposed military regimes—but later shifted to a policy of broad amnesty in the face of sustained resistance from its armed forces and others. Germany, itself an exception to the typical successor regime due to unification, is said by Timothy Garton Ash to have done it all. In his words, “Germany has had trials and purges and truth commissions and has systematically opened the secret-police files to each and every individual who wants to know what was done to him or her—or what he or she did to others.” 2 There has been intensive use of prosecution by national authorities in Ethiopia, Burundi, and Rwanda—albeit by successor regimes which do not qualify by virtually any standards as [End Page 432] emerging democracies. 3 Such developments are central to the evolution of human rights in the late twentieth century. The term transitional justice characterizes the choices made and quality of justice rendered when new leaders replace authoritarian predecessors presumed responsible for criminal acts in the wake of the “third wave of democratization.” 4 Many such new regimes and polities confront conflicting perceptions, demands, hopes, and fears concerning justice, truth, national reconciliation, and the building of more stable democracies. These attitudes and calculations shape numerous decisions about whether and how to deal with recent political and state crimes. Most dramatically, decisions are to be made about whether these should be investigations, prosecutions, amnesties, or pardons for particular individuals or crimes. Several successor regimes have also confronted demands that the new regimes adopt “lustration” or screening laws providing noncriminal sanctions against those involved in police surveillance and other detested activities of the former regime. 5 Decisions have also been made about whether to permit civil suits against...

No ‘poverty line’ says social security chief

No ‘poverty line’ says social security chief

Aspects of Aviation Coatings

The writer remembers — with a healthy nostalgia — when data sheets still included information on medium taughtening dopes and the chief test‐pilot of his principal account raced a greyhound, took bets and qualified for jets as a grandfather. Those were indeed the days and we speak of Blackburn Aircraft Limited in the epoch wedged between the Beverley freighter and the Buccaneer, otherwise known as the NA39 fighter‐bomber. An impeccable salute from the commissionaire for which he received a new crisp 10/‐note, breakfast in the flying club with the chief security officer, lunch with ‘Sailor’ Parker later to be tragically killed in action, so to speak, testing the NA39. On summer evenings golf with the purchasing boys on the fine Brough course then, the tasting of fine wines and perhaps, a measure of after dinner hilarity. In between we did a great deal of effective work.

Uniformed off-Duty Police May Soon Be Hired by Supermarkets to Catch Shoplifters Says Security Chief

Uniformed off-Duty Police May Soon Be Hired by Supermarkets to Catch Shoplifters Says Security Chief

The Departments

A comprehensive national perception and commitment are needed if society is to untangle conflicting efforts to solve energy problems and design a policy that is scientifically and philosophically harmonious with nature. The National Security Chief, Brzezinski, perceives the interrelationship of politics, social purpose, and technology, although the President's policies are threatened by environmental and economic problems because science has taught us to reduce problems when what is needed is an holistic view. Continued clashes are foreseen between those who would proceed along the traditional path of the technological fix and those who feel the United States should set an example by developing a new way of operating. Conflicts will arise in the next decades over the increasing demands of developing countries and competing pressures to conserve and produce in a system that is based on expanding proserve and produce in a system that is based on expanding production to consumption. World-wide financial dilemmas seem to be inevitable as environmental needs demand more capital than may be available. Entropy may be the ultimate enemy in the ''moral equivalent of war,'' which the President terms the national effort to design an energy goal and policy. (DCK)